Pictures of the

Time-Triggered Architecture

Demonstrator

(Click on the pictures to get a larger view)

Laboratory Views

The first picture (Top View) shows the Time-Triggered Architecture Demonstrator, i.e., the car model, from the top. It illustrates the topology of the network components very well: On the corners you can identify the four wheel units, comprising the wheel, the gearbox, the TTP/A actuators (servo and motor) and sensors (potentiometer and incremental sensor), and the TTP/C wheel node. These wheel components can be identified even more precisely in the picture Front View. In the center of the top view you can see the replicated main nodes. Each of these nodes contains (from left to right) an RC-receiver, the TTP/A sensor nodes for decoding the received PWM-signals, and the TTP/C-node. The Pb-accumulators are placed between the front and rear wheels. They are powering the elelctric and electronic devices in a redundant fashion.

The picture Wheel Node shows the wheel node in detail. What you actually see are the two TTP/C IPs, which are plugged  into the host backplane. The host backplane is a standard IP 360 (Green Spring) that contains two slots for attaching IP modules. The right TTP/C IP acts as communication controller for the TTP/C communication system. The left IP is basically the same hardware but is used for implementing the TTP/C - TTP/A gateway to connect the sensor and actuator bus to the host.

The picture TTP/A Node shows the PCB that has been designed for the integration of sensors and actuators into the TTP/A communication system. The layout is intended for the use with several kinds of actuators in the car model. The left hand node in the picture shows the plane with the bus driver, the power regulation, the peripheral devices for the microcontroller, and the sensor and actuator connectors. The right node views the attached microcontroller (Motorola MC68HC711P2), the reset switch and the power and indicator LEDs.

Pictures of the FTCS '98 Exhibition

FTCS shows the table of the Vienna University of Technology at the FTCS Exhibition held at the European Patent Office in Munich in June 1998. The car model with the RC transmitter are placed on the left side of the table. On the right side you can see the radio uplink (the box with the small antenna) that is connected to the PC via Ethernet. The uploaded data is used for monitoring at the PC with a web server. The Java applet visualizes the current membership of all TTP/C and TTP/A components. The current values and the values to be applied are shown for the wheel speed as well as for the wheel positions.